Shown at BUG 07: R.E.M.’s Hollow Man by Crush

David Knight - 28th May 2008

Every new R.E.M. album brings fresh claims of a return to former greatness, but this time it actually looks justified. This song, Hollow Man, actually does sound like it could be on Green or Automatic For The People.

Conversely the video for Hollow Man could hardly be more Noughties: a freewheeling mirror to the digital world we live in. It was created by Crush, the Toronto-based design and animation/motion graphics house probably best known for creating viral-like visuals for Douglas Coupland's recent book The Gum Thief.

"He wanted a video that was frantic and dense and not overly polished or fretted over," says Gary Thomas from Crush, who co-directed the video with Stefan Woronko. "Michael has great instincts about what visuals are right for the song, but really allowed us to run with the clip, adding really good, insightful comments at the right times."

Ultimately Crush's video for Hollow Man is one to stand with the best REM videos - an expressionistic digital bombardment that seems elegiac.

Gary Thomas from Crush on making the Hollow Man video

"We first spoke to Michael at the end of February. He heard about us through the work we did last year for Doug Coupland's new book, The Gum Thief. He wanted a video that was frantic and dense and not overly polished or fretted over. Michael has great instincts about what visuals are right for the song, but really allowed us to run with the clip, adding really good, insightful comments at the right times, even as the band began a punishing press tour to launch the new album.

"When we first started talking to Michael about the meaning behind the lyrics, the song really struck a chord with us. We all fear losing who we are or getting so far down a path, either in career or personally, that we can't get back. We wanted to build on that as our theme. The idea of isolation, the universality of that and to see how that moment of realization, the explosion of understanding changes your path.

"From there we took a page from REM's approach to writing and recording the new record. We wanted to take the "punk" aesthetic and represent it for 2008. We wanted to see the Hollow Man as a person (or in our case three people), as a digital avatar, or as a roughly drawn representation.

"We wanted the lyrics to stand out front, plain and confronting without losing their layers of meaning. We felt that the moment of understanding needed to feel like an explosion, and that dictated the rush of images, punctuated by moments of clarity (the falling man).

"Crush works a bit like a band. We all have our roles but we collaborate, sometimes leading each other and sometimes following. The creative process was liquid and constantly changing. We knew where we wanted to go, but didn't constrict ourselves early on, adding and subtracting until sometime around lunchtime on the day the video shipped.

"We started out feeling like typography was going to be the main device, then felt a hand animated section would give it the humanity the words needed, then as we explored, we thought a live action representation would connect all the elements. The digital "avatar" came from [Michael's] comments about performing the song at SXSW, and it went on to becoming the symbolic heart of the video.

"We used every toy in the building, shot footage in Stephanie (our producer's) apartment, in our grubby stairwell, just generally got back to a place where all creative people start and then slowly get away from, to try to make pictures work like music."